Page 23 of A Loser by Christmas
Christmas week looks completely empty. I tap the calendar on his phone screen. “How about here?”
“That’s when I’ll be at home in Cornwall. Can’t fucking wait.” He makes that time sound completely off-limits as well. So are a lot of the evenings when he will be in London. “This is when Icansee you, Valentin.”
What he had pointed out were afternoons filled with visits to rinks, like our first destination, where I spend the rest of the afternoon watching him glow.
He’s happy as soon as he steps onto ice.
In his element.
Calum skates a few laps fast before stopping to tower over local reporters, a giant who wears a bright yellow jersey with NO CONTACT printed on it.
I video him answering questions. “How is my recovery going? The club is happy with my progress.” He fields another. “What are the specifics of my injury?” He zips his lips with a finger in another reminder of an alleyway conversation. “You guys know we can’t share strategic intel.” He grins. “You never know who might be listening. I’ll be back on the ice next year. But this recovery period did seem like the perfect time to come home and let more kids know that hockey can change their lives like it changed mine. I scored a million-to-one opportunity. More British kids deserve the same chance to learn to love the best game in the world as much as I do.”
So why does he want to escape the contract that lets him play for his living?
I park that question while a reporter asks another.
“How did hockey change my life?” Calum crosses thick arms, and I expect him to mention his big-money contracts. “By extending my community.” He glances my way. “My hockey family. It’s given me more brothers worth dropping my gloves for.” I can’t help replaying the sight of teammates swarming to him the same way children do now, impatient for their coaching session with an actual NHL star. Calum is quickly surrounded. “Which is why camps like these are important,” he calls out from a huddle of hero worship. “They extend my hockey family and theirs.”
It’s cute.
It’s also useless, which I tell him hours later after steering him back along the river. We end up at a familiar Chelsea mooring. “You want me to record more coaching sessions like that one?”
He nods, eyes glinting like the night-dark river.
“I’m telling you straight, nothing I recorded today will make your club drop you.”
“I already guessed that.” He can’t stop himself from asking, “Because?”
“Because there’s nothing juicy to work with.” I follow him ashore and explain on the same brisk walk we’ve made once already. “You’re meant to be a hard man. I’m telling you now, I’ve spread harder butter in my galley.”
He laughs.
I don’t.
“Seriously, you did everything right with those kids. You need to do something wrong. Something so out of character the whole hockey world takes notice. Something your club can’t let slide.”
He stops dead, getting in the way of evening Christmas shoppers. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like letting a kid fall over instead of helping them to keep their balance.” An idea strikes. “No. If you got the timing right, you could shove one and take down the rest of them like dominos. Toc, toc, toc.” I flick a finger the way Père Noel taught me to one Christmas Eve. “Line them up and knock over every single kid in one go. The optics would be so grim. You’d look a massive dickhead. It’s perfect.”
“Perfect?” He eyes me, his brow furrowed in a reminder of his older brother. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Juno?”
“I wasn’t suggesting you push kids over for real. We could stage it.” I sniff. “It was just an idea.”
“A psychotic one. It’s a shitty idea.”
I finally take in where he has come to a standstill. We’re close to the same restaurant he visited once already. “Not as shitty as this place.”
“Penny’s?” He turns to study a candlelit window across the street. “I thought it would be good for an early dinner.”
“If you hate whoever you’re eating with.”
“Hate them?”
“Yes. Hate, because this place has such a bad rep. You know it has a really low star rating and terrible reviews, don’t you?”
He faces me, game-face mask back on. “How do you know that?”
